Down with downtime

ISPs are no longer off the hook - even when the power is. Taking some basic power protection measures can ensure that users won't start looking elsewhere for Internet access

Downtime is an ISP's natural enemy - an unpredictable beast that scares customers and eats profits. As the Internet becomes more essential to people's business and personal lives, users are getting less tolerant of service interruptions. These days, customers who can't read their daily e-mail don't just shrug and blame "that darned computer." They get on the phone to their ISP's customer support desk. And if customers have experienced repeated problems, they'll start looking at the other 500 ISPs in town. Businesses are even less inclined to be forgiving, especially if they conduct business directly over the Web and measure their profits in online minutes.

ISPs face a customer base that's more sophisticated and better informed than ever, with access to third-party reports on ISP reliability and efficiency. Competition for customers has turned into an endurance match, with every ISP fighting to stay up and running the longest.

Unfortunately, the nation's power grid is less predictable than ever. Increased usage and decaying infrastructure have combined to make rolling blackouts and "scheduled service interruptions" a common event in U.S. cities. Chicago, for example, made headlines last summer with a series of blackouts downtown. You can guess how ISPs in the area made out - if Americans don't accept blizzards in New York as a reason for their flight being canceled in Los Angeles, they won't accept a blackout in Chicago as the reason for their Web page in Milwaukee going down. ISPs have little reason to expect this situation will improve in the near future and every reason to find their own answer to the threat of power failures before they lose customers.

But one industry's pain being another industry's opportunity, the power protection industry has been growing and evolving at a fantastic rate. An ISP with the foresight to invest in its own power protection system can expect to find solutions to problems it didn't know it had.

The old standby

To operate through a blackout, ISPs need an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). These devices provide battery backup when AC power is interrupted. More specifically, ISPs need an extended-run UPS. Systems in this league are massive devices, capable of providing full battery backup for hours while the rest of the city wallows in darkness. Their run time is limited only by the number of batteries the ISP hooks up to them, and their recharge time can be cut drastically by using batteries with built-in chargers.

ISPs often expect premium UPS systems to have refinements such as hot-swap capability (allowing battery connection and other maintenance tasks without interrupting the power supply to servers), online capability (designed to protect sensitive systems from even a microsecond lapse in power) and multi-server connectivity.

Don't confuse these UPSs with the systems you'll find at the local computer store. Smaller systems generally have just enough battery power to keep their load running while users save files and shut down systems - usually 20 minutes or so. Of course, those 20 minutes can carry an ISP through short power interruptions, and allowing their employees to finish and save what they're working on can be a boon beyond price. Smaller UPSs also are considerably less expensive, especially in quantity. They're not necessarily what ISPs need for their servers, but having one for every workstation in the office is feasible, even with a limited budget.

The fastest-changing area in power protection has been the interface between UPSs and computers. Even some economy UPS systems can communicate via a network, alerting network administrators to power problems or telling computers to save files and shut themselves down automatically. More sophisticated UPS systems, including extended-run systems, can take orders as well as give them. Such systems can shut themselves down over weekends and holidays and start up again for Monday morning or reboot locked-up computers in remote locations, saving travel time and technician wages.

Attention software lovers

ISPs shopping for power protection probably will want to focus on the software running intelligent UPS systems. As with any product, network administrators that want to manage every aspect of their operations may fall in love with features particular to one software offering. For example, some programs can page or call an off-duty technician to come in when the power goes out - a feature that probably won't thrill many techies but could save the ISP's day. But technophiles who envision dozens of different UPS systems and computers living in perfect harmony should look hard at compatibility issues: Only a handful of power protection software packages work with more than one platform (Figure 1).

The smartest software in the world won't do any good if the ISP doesn't know how to use it. Most power protection companies offer customer support, but as in the ISP industry, there's customer support, and then there's customer support. The trick is to decide what kind of support a supplier offers before committing to a large purchase. Before buying a complete UPS system, a network administrator should call the company's support line to evaluate its services. Most companies will have better support for their more expensive products and larger accounts, but if the low-level support is good, the ISP can count on the higher-level support being acceptable, too.

Budget-conscious network administrators can find other ways to get the most from their power protection dollar. For example, a UPS system will protect electronic equipment from deterioration and downtime caused by frequent low or high voltages. Thanks to an aging power industry, brownouts (low voltage conditions) are the most common power problem in the U.S. They cause computer crashes that mystify software gurus, and consistently low voltage eats away at an electrical component's life span.

But if battery backup isn't essential, the problem of brownouts can be solved economically by using line conditioners, which can convert a range of voltage to a nominal 120 V output. This prevents equipment from shutting down when the voltage drops too far or from damaging itself while operating at an incorrect voltage. Line conditioners are practical for power-hungry printers and other peripherals that don't have to keep working through blackouts.

Suppressing those surges

Going without surge protection isn't a wise choice for any type of service provider. Though not the most common of power problems, surges are by far the most catastrophic, laying waste to motherboards and magnetic media, reducing a roomful of sophisticated silicon to scorched sand. UPS systems and quality surge suppressors arm delicate computer systems against extreme voltage on the power line - which is to say, everything from a circuit-welding glitch at the utility plant to a direct lightning strike on a transformer.

Most ISPs already have this common-sense protection in place. But as some have discovered the hard way, surge protection is necessary on telephone, data and cable lines, too. Despite their low operating voltage, all wires to the outside are a vulnerable, especially because they enter directly into a computer's circuitry without the minimal mediation of the computer's power supply. Surge suppressors for telephone/fax lines, coaxial cables, T-1 and ISDN lines and the like are inexpensive and easy to install (Figure 2). Most plug directly into a computer's phone or data port and operate without further maintenance. Also, many UPS systems and surge suppressors incorporate built-in protection for one or more telephone lines.

Surge suppressors can prevent a surprising range of problems. A "shaky" or "snowy" monitor is frequently the result of power line noise from electrically erratic equipment such as printers or copiers elsewhere in the building. Modems also can be plagued by line noise, possibly causing connection problems for ISP customers. A quality surge suppressor stops noise from leaking out of equipment plugged into it and from leaking in from other areas. The difference, as anyone with a rolling-monitor headache can tell you, isn't trivial.

Clearly, until the power grid of the nation improves substantially, ISPs will have applications for all types of power protection devices. Investing in power protection isn't a sexy way to spend an ISP's budget - there always will be hotter processors and faster connections to buy instead. But the race for customers isn't a sprint; it's a marathon - and the last ISPs standing will be the ones with the least amount of downtime.